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Excited about what’s going to happen in 2022? Want to know how digital marketing trends will impact your business? Here in this blog, we have come up with the latest trends that every digital marketer should consider before making their marketing decisions.
A lot of updates have been made in Google Algorithms this year and many advancements have been done in AI technologies and machine learning. This will have a huge impact on your website visibility and ranking on SERPs. What is working today may not work the same way in 2022. Therefore, to get the best out of your digital marketing practices, these trends should be at your fingertips.
Moreover, you would also like to explore the latest Social Media Marketing Trends here.
Let’s get into more detail on 2022 digital marketing trends.
1. YMYL and E-A-T
YMYL is an acronym for “Your Money or Your Life”. No doubt that Google wants only relevant content to be shown in search results to its users. Besides, the content should also deliver the correct information. The web pages that are of low quality and contain uneducated advice, opinions, or that have been created for fraudulent purposes won’t get served in results.
Instead, Google recommends sites that display a high level of expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, i.e., E-A-T.
How to do it?
The answer is to create content that your audience will love. Begin with keyword research, understand the searcher’s intent, figure out the stage they are in when they search for a particular keyword. Create content that is simple to understand and try to build domain authority in your industry. If your customers have any complaints about your brand, try to address them as soon as possible and gather positive reviews. Let them have clear contact with website owners.
2. Google Verified Listings for Local SEO
The “near me” searches are in trend for local businesses like a plumbing company, a clinic, or a local restaurant. To rank your business for these local search terms, you need to make sure your listing is verified on Google My Business. At a glance, your customers can learn more about your business, the opening and closing hours, address, star ratings, and reviews, see images, and more.
How to do it?
Visit on Google My Business website. Sign in and fill out the required details to list your local business. And, then, submit your listing for verification. This helps you manage your business information in Search, Maps, and other Google properties and makes your business trustworthy and recognized.
3. Voice Search Technology
A person looking for the nearest plumber might search it on Google like “Plumbers in Los Angeles”. And, if he asks Cortana, he might say “Where do I find a plumber near me?”
Voice search through Alexa, Siri, or Cortana made it easy for users to search quickly without typing a long-phrase. That is why these searches are in trend nowadays.
How to optimize your content for voice search?
Think about what your target audience may ask. Choose long-tail keywords while publishing your content. Include the questions and their relevant answers in your content. And, optimize your website for mobile-indexing as most of the voice searches are performed through mobile devices.
4. Visual Search Technology
The visual search technology allows users to take a photo of a physical object and retrieve information about the image through Google search. No need to type a long description in the search bar. One such visual search technology offered by Google is ‘Google Lens’.
How to optimize your content for visual search?
- Include high-resolution images on your website.
- Make sure every image has Alt Tags.
- Create an image sitemap and submit it to the search console.
- Optimize image titles and descriptions
- Optimize image size and file types
- Include captions to clear the content of images.
- Make your active online presence on image submission or bookmarking websites like Pinterest.
5. Mobile-First Websites
Since Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. So make sure your website is ready for mobile-first indexing. Google Webmasters Central Blog has posted an update on what every website owner should pay attention to.
How to optimize websites for mobile-first index?
- Use the same meta robots tags on the mobile and desktop site
- Don’t lazy-load primary content upon user interaction
- Allow Google Bots to crawl all your resources.
- Desktop and mobile content should be the same.
- Structured data should be present on both versions of your site
- Metadata should be the same for both versions
- Follow Better Ad Standard while displaying ads on your website
- Make sure the visual content follows the best practices.
6. Structured Data
Structured data helps Google to understand the content on the web page. This helps make your site display rich features in search results.
Here is an example of rich results that display in a sequential list or gallery from a single site.
Follow these guidelines to mark structured data on your website.
7. Video Marketing
From a 30-second ad to vlogs and live videos, video marketing has proven its worth in engaging audiences. Live streaming videos on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube hook the viewers in. Product or service related videos are efficient in demonstrating all the features and specifications. 360-degree videos provide an amazing visual experience to the consumers.
How to optimize video content?
- Video files should have proper titles and descriptions with your target keyword.
- Add relevant tags.
- Add transcript, subtitles and closed captions.
- Add thumbnail images for your videos.
- Embed the video on the relevant web page.
8. Zero-click searches
Visit Google and search “Time in California”. You’ll get a result like this:
The first result didn’t include any links to land on a website. This is called a zero-click search. It can be in the form of Featured Snippets, instant answers, and knowledge graphs. These results are in trend nowadays as they satisfy users’ search intent without having to click any actual search result links.
How to optimize your website content for Zero-Click Search Results?
- Creating high-quality and information-rich content.
- Target Question-Based Keywords.
- Use Relevant Images and videos with proper tags and keywords.
- Optimize heading tags, title tags, and meta descriptions.
- Build quality links that point to your content.
9. Google’s BERT Algorithm
According to the BERT update, Google uses machine learning to understand the natural language and context of words in searches to rank the websites in search results.
How to optimize your content?
Google BERT framework has been developed for better understanding of content by Google bots. Just make sure your pages are not over-optimized and they contain only relevant content that satisfies users’ search intent.
10. Personalized Content
You might get frustrated after watching an irrelevant ad everywhere on the web. This is because you have nothing to do with this. This arises the need for delivering personalized content.
How to do it?
Target the moments that matter the most, i.e., moment marketing. Moment marketing ensures that the right content is delivered to the right customers at the right moment.
Gain insights about your customers and accordingly plan your advertising campaign.
Analyze the customer’s behavior towards the brand or product.
11. Marketing Through Micro-Influencers
Influencer Marketing has been used in digital marketing over the years. But, here, we’re talking about micro-influencers. Micro-influencers have their reach in their own niches and help small and medium enterprises to attract the audience. These micro-influencers can be a blogger, vlogger, podcaster, or a popular personality on social media.
How to do influencer marketing?
Let’s say you’re a local food brand and would like to promote your brand to your target audience. In such a case, it will be beneficial for you to reach out to a food blogger on Instagram or a vlogger who is managing his recipe channel on YouTube.
12. Chatbots
Chatbots are one of the most exciting AI technologies that are being used for marketing purposes. This software facilitates conversations with your customers. Chatbots manages the initial steps of conversation by gathering general information about your customers and answering FAQs.
How to use chatbots for marketing?
- You can use chatbots to gather initial information from leads.
- Chatbots can help you schedule a sales call, a customer service call or an onboarding session.
- Use them to answer questions that are frequently asked by customers.
- Chatbots can greet all the potential leads that land on your website.
13. Augmented Reality
Watch how Ikea, the Swedish company, uses Augmented Reality to increase user engagement with their brand. They can check how the furniture will look in their home.
Similarly, Sephora has developed an app to facilitate the online purchase of makeup. See it live in action,
This allows customers to test the products using their mobile camera.
This is how AR is now an emerging trend as it offers a unique and seamless experience to the users.
14. Shoppable Posts
Shoppable posts are the biggest advancements in the e-commerce industry. These posts emerge as a new-age shopping venue as they allow viewers to buy the products directly from the posts.
According to HubSpot-
Shoppable post-marketing reduces the steps in the conversion process.
Final Words
Nothing can be said for sure about what changes the coming year will bring. It’s your responsibility to keep yourself updated with the current digital marketing trends. I hope this blog helped you a lot. Don’t forget to share your opinions in the comment section below.
